Club Obi Wan

I had a very insteresting few days trying to nail down what I want..still not sure but the folks at FS were very helpful. I ordered two jackets, and one will definitely go back, and they know that..a raiders in vintage dk brown, and an expedition in brown goat...I was steered away from the lamb (they acutally had them availbable in both jackets) with the explanation being that they are on the delicate side and if I intend to wear these out a lot, not just occasionally the cow and goat will just hold up much better, so I hope they will also look and drape at least as well. They have to make up a raiders for me, again with no obligation of keeping it, and they are holding the expedition in my size...it seems I am an off the rack 38, so this is good news....reports in a couple of weeks, and thanks to all...it is hard to decide on these two without seeing them side by side, so my neurotic tendencies won out.

Speaking about the delicate nature of lamb, I bought an expensive black leather this winder, and Andrew Marc, I think it is goat and it is just beautiful, but I can tell it will not hold it's shape over time very well..I wear this for business (I am blessed that I can do this) and around town, it is a great jacket, it was not cheap, but what the heck...I hope it holds us, it shoud be interesting to see and it looks just like the lamb swatches that FS send me to check out.

Guitone,

It's interesting to hear that you ordered the FS Raider in the Vintage Dark Brown. I've been thinking of ordering that jacket in the same color and hide. I'll look forward to hearing your review.

Best of luck,

Bushman

Bushman,

They say this one ages the best and shoes off the grain of the leather the best.....will report when I know more...

guitone wrote:

Speaking about the delicate nature of lamb, I bought an expensive black leather this winder, and Andrew Marc, I think it is goat and it is just beautiful, but I can tell it will not hold it's shape over time very well..

guitone,

Did you mean to say that you think your Andrew Marc jacket is lamb?

I have had my FS goat Expo for close to a year now. It has become quite soft and supple. I don't know how it compares to lamb in terms of drape and softness. I do know that the goat has not picked up any visible scratches. That is both good and bad depending on your viewpoint. I have scraped up against brick walls without a mark on my FS goat. I have not ventured into the territory of trying to artificially age the jacket, but I hear that it is not easy.

I am curious as to the FS lamb vs. FS goat. Do those who have both favor wearing one more that the other?

Axel

Axel,

Your right, my Andrew Marc is lamb I think, not goat....I was rethinking the raiders in cow as I know this will be heavy and even though the goat does not age the way the cow will it may be a nice sturdy jacket, good to wear in the warmer, spring and fall climates here in New England...but I am waiting to hear back from FS on that. I love the feel of what I think is my lamb leather, just great, and I don't know if I really think it is fragile, I sure hope not, but I am sure the goat is as strong. The thing about aging, I think in some jackets it makes the look, not sure it is needed in all, as you said good or bad depending on your viewpoint.

...hmm, guitone you did exactly as I would have done! Make the most of the shipping cost by selecting two jackets sent to you that you are seriously interested in for comparison sake if nothing else (two different sized selections being another option unless you are sure).

And, since I have both a lamb and goat Expedition, I cannot argue with the logic of choosing the goatskin or cowhide, especially if that will be your main ‘go to’ jacket to wear regularly. The lamb IS more fragile as you say and prone to rips, tears, and snags, particularly G&B's lamb which is very thin and light weight compared to the USWings lamb. I wear the lamb sparingly, mostly for special occasions. There isn't much color difference between the G&B lamb and goat, although my lamb is slightly darker, and the drape on G&B’s supple goat is good after continued wear, although it will never quite equal that of the lambskin; an analogy being, if the goat is supple and buttery soft, the lamb should be considered a more supple, melt in your mouth type buttery soft. The lamb has not the grain the goatskin/cowhide has either, but rather it is more luxurious in nature.

Oh, and one other thing Axel, if you tend to carry a lot of junk in your jacket pockets, inside pocket or outside, the G&B lamb will tend to outline or form around those items and likely make their impressions visible to anyone who cares to notice ...like a lot of keys, coins, glasses, lighters, etc... But, that's the trade off for having a fabulous drape that is not equaled by any other hide.

Rixter, thanks again......now on the raiders jacket, how do you think the goat and the cowhide would compare/differ? This maybe be academic as most on this list wear an indy style....

Thanks again and again, great information and help.

The goatskin will be more supple and less heavy than the Raiders jacket and also will have that brand new 'look' right out of the box, whereas, the cowhide does have a subtle worn look in comparison, not anywhere near that of the USWings 'Vintage' hides you see on their site. But, with a Raiders jacket, like you've chose, it is not as important to have the drape that most folks expect in their Expedition, IMO.

Other than that, it's just a matter of color, jacket weight and thickness (summer/spring vs more of a colder climate jacket), the style or 'look' of the jacket on YOU, and intangibles that you may prefer in choosing between the two, who knows, you may wind up liking both, the choice is yours.

You can't necessarily compare these two hides right out of the box. The cowhide has been "aged" already, and by that nature, will drape better right out of the box than the goatskin is going to. I have the light vintage brown cowhide (more of a russet color than the seal color you're going to get-they don't offer the light any longer, I think), and it draped better right out of the box than a year old goatskin Expo I also had at the time. So, you can't compare these to jackets very well, right out of the box, according to how it drapes. The goatskin, once it breaks in over a year or so, is going to drape better, and will continue to mold itself to your body and drape better and better every time you wear it over the years. But right out of the box, I can tell you right now, the cowhide will drape better.

All I'm saying is don't judge these leathers on drape. You'll do alot of maintenence to that cowhide to keep it in good shape (ie, Pecards applications twice a year, periodic "spot" applications, etc, to keep it looking good)-the goatskin, you can treat once a year and wear the #### out of it, and it will just come back for more, and continue to look better and better every day you wear it.

So, just keep the future of the jacket in mind, I guess.

That's my .02 worth. And whichever jacket you LIKE better! Personally, I've a hard time any more deciding between my Aero A-2 or my FS Expo which one I'm gonna wear for the 8 short weeks of winter we have down here in the sub tropics.

Later!
Indydawg

The thing I am most scared of is that I will want to keep both.....

I have two goaskin jackets. One is a Split-S Avation A-2 that is 30+ years old. It is beautifully, naturally distress. In fact the fit and distressing is very Raidersish. My other goatskin jacket is a Wested ToD. I've had it about 6 months. Its just now begining to show some distressing around the cuffs and the bottom of the jacket. In fact after a dozen or more hiking trips in very rough terrain the only noticeable scratch is on the left pocket. And thats from me climbing a sandstone overhang that was as rough as 60 grit sandpaper. So the goat is very tough, but soft, supple and light.

Indydawg,

Maybe I’m confused, but I had a chance to try both the Nappa Vintage Brown (the lighter hide) and the Vintage Dark Brown that I thought guitone was purchasing. Those two cowhides jackets that I got were VERY different as I noted in previous posts wouldn’t you agree. The (Light) Vintage Brown that you have is MORE aged than the Vintage Dark Brown offering and much lighter in weight and probably would drape better than the Indy Goatskin right off, but the Vintage Dark Brown is much heavier than both the Light Vintage Brown you have and the Goatskin offering on the Indy to my recollection. In fact, the Vintage Dark Brown has considerable more grain to it. It wasn’t as stiff as some cowhides I’ve had, but I wouldn’t exactly compare it to a G&B’s goatskin. So you really can’t even compare the two cowhides as well, they are considerably different.

Now if guitone is considering a lighter weight cowhide to wear, than I would select the Nappa (Lighter) Vintage Brown, which is considerably lighter in color though. I guess I would prefer, personally, the darker color, heavier and all, for my climate. Again it just comes down to individual needs and preferences.

BTW: I’d like to get an Aero A-2 one day, I understand they are very nice jackets.

From my talking to the CS reps at FS it seems the lighter brown (vintage) in the raiders jacket is not as nicely figured in color as the darker, I didn't know there might be a difference is weight and feel though as that was never mentioned...but I would still have to go for looks on something like this. They have a vintage lamb in my size but if I go with either of these jackets I would expect them to get a lot of wear, not as a dress jacket but as a casual jacket whenever I had the chance.

Perhaps I wasn't quite clear on what he was getting-I was under the impression he was getting a goatskin Expo and the Dark Brown Vintage Cowhide Raiders jacket to try out each one and was sending back the one he didn't like (or liked less, which is far more likely to be the case).

No, you're right about the light vintage cowhide and the dark vintage cowhide being very different in color and weight. Indiana Joe and I compared ours, as we are the only people to have the Expedition in the cowhides-his in the Dark Brown and mine in the Light Brown (which is really a russet brown, comparable to the Wested "Authentic" colored hides and the russet colored hides that FS offers in their A-2s), and they were, indeed, different in weight and very different in color. Now to grain-I thought our two samples were very much the same, with neither seeming to have the grainier jacket. I will really have to get around to posting our pictures of those two jackets side by side one of these days. If I can dredge 'em up, that is.

Either way, though, unless FS is using different goatskins now than they used to make the jackets in the beginning, either of those cowhides is going to drape better out of the box than that goatskin. It takes a WHILE for that leather to really soften up to the point that you could call it "draping" right, and forming to your body. The cowhide takes shape much quicker. That is, like I said, unless they are using different goatskins now. In which case, I don't know what I'm talking about and should subequently be ignored ....

I really just wanted to make sure that guitone gave the goatskin a chance to take shape a bit before he decided to make his decision-especially if "drape" was one of the qualifications for which jacket he decided to keep. The draping possibilities for the goatskins I've seen cannot be guaged well right out of the box. That's all I meant.

Hope I was making sense this time!

Later!
Indydawg

PS, Rixter-Yep, that Aero is one fine jacket. It, too, takes some beating it up to really get it broken in. I spent the night out in a camp chair last weekend getting my daughter registered for Pre-K (the good ones are very competitive here-the line started forming at 5PM the day BEFORE registration began at 8AM), and sleeping outside, with my body heat and the moisture outdoors, had that jacket fittin' SO good the next time I wore it. It just goes to show you that all the artificial wearing in the world can't beat just wearing the thing and lettin' nature take its course. If you like A-2s, the Aero is right up there with the best of them.

Indydawg, you got it right, a goat expedition to try and a cow raiders. They give month now before you need to return, no longer the 6 months as on the web site, but I would hopefully get a sense of how it will drape. For me it would be about hanging nicely for the expedition, the raiders will be a very different jacket to evaluate.

Indydawg is right. The goat might not drape how you like right out of the box. I also should clarify a statement of mine. I said they goat was soft and supple, well, I should have said that my goat jackets are soft and supple. From what I've read goatskin seems to vary from batch to batch. I don't know about the FS, but my Wested goat was so soft when I got it I thought it was lamb. Thus my jacket draped great out of the box. However, some people have received Wested goats that were as stiff as a board. What I'm getting at is that if the FS goat is stiff don't give up on it, because as you use it it will become softer.

By touch the samples that FS sent to me of the goat and the lamb are very close to the same to the touch, the difference is in the pebbling and the fact that there is little I can do to mar the goat, incredible....I would think a little break in is well worth the added durability. It will be a few weeks till I get them as I want to compare them side by side but I think it will be interesting. I think the raider jacket really needs to have a bit of a distressed look, but the expedition, in my opinion can do ok in a non- distressed material. I tried to watch the last crusade last night, the only indy movie I have on VHS but it is darn hard to really see the jacket and I would love to just find a site where you can see some people actually wearing these jackets. The only site is the wested site with the raiders jacket being modeled.

I don't know of any site with pics people wearing the expedition. Are you loking for pics of the expedition or Indy jackets in general?

Just the indy jacket in general, just for the basic look of them on, the longer length like TOD etc....

Well, here are some pics of my Wested ToD Auth Brown Goat. Forgive me, some of these pics were taken in my pre-fedora days!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... Gear/4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... Gear/3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... Gear/2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... Gear/1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... ject8A.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... oject9.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... ject11.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v320/ ... ject12.jpg

Once you see the Expo in dark brown goat...your decision will be EASY! A great jacket.

J_, thanks for the pics, exactly what I wanted to see..great looking and fitting jacket.....

I appreciate all of the help offered by all, can't wait to get a look at these and decide.

Rixter,

Thanks for the comparison of the FS goat vs. FS lamb. My summary of your comments is that the lamb is more luxurious, but more fragile and is more of a special occasion vs. daily wear jacket. It drapes beautifully, but items in the pockets will show through the leather.

Have you actually had rips and tears visible on your FS lamb or has your special treatment avoided this? Will the objects in the pocket cause permanent "molding" of the objects? Does it cause you not to want to carry objects in the pockets? Also, which jacket did you buy first and if you had it to do again would you still buy both jackets?

Axel

As I recall, I purchased the goatskin Indy before the lambskin because I wanted a jacket that was tough, and I was already familiar with how good the goatskin ‘wore’ having purchased a custom G-1 in that hide for the colder seasons here. Later, I couldn’t resist getting the lambskin after seeing it and trying a friends G&B Indy lamb. It looked sharp, and more dressy (at least to me) and I needed a lighter weight jacket since the goat was just to warm on a many a day (the lamb being about the weight of a nylon windbreaker).

I haven’t had any rips, tears, or snags on my Indy lamb in over a year, but then I only use it throughout our warmer season. As to carrying objects in my jacket, I’ve gotten use to not doing that. I really don’t do this with most of my jackets for some odd reason now that you brought it up. I suppose it’s a peculiarity of mine, but I travel light and carry keys in my pants pocket only. I rarely carry anything else, except a wallet. I suppose it’s a military thing or something. To be frank, using the side entry pockets on an Indy jacket (which is not even available on most ‘authentic’ military jackets) and you would soon lose your keys, coins, or anything else for that matter, and I’m often in too much of a hurry to constantly be opening and closing the snaps on the front pockets (...geez, am I lazy). I do make use of the inside pocket(s), but usually only for a few courtesy cards and/or a small notebook which is so thin it doesn’t make any difference to the drape nor does it leave any “molding” as you say. But, I would not recommend carrying any heavy or irregular bulky metal objects (like keys) in any of the pockets for a prolonged period. I’m not sure what effect it would have since I haven’t cared to experiment by doing so.

I personally would still purchase it simply because it’s the lightest leather jacket I have to wear when the weather gets a bit to warm for any other of my leather jackets. But I admit, I always try to remain aware that it is a lambskin jacket, and one that I want to keep in pristine condition.

Thanks for the information Rixter. I'll definitely give the FS lamb consideration if I am ever in the market for a lightweight leather jacket.

Axel